


Love's Noose

by Arithanas



Category: Original Work
Genre: Assault, Ghost Stories, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Inspired by Art, Inspired by Poetry, Loyalty, My First Fanfic, Tithe to Hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 15:46:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16495619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arithanas/pseuds/Arithanas
Summary: There is only one sin you can't repent from.





	Love's Noose

The little La Brumosa Island had stood between Alegranza and Roque del Este for centuries, and had been Spain’s most guarded secret since their Catholic majesties planted their royal banners there, almost a century ago. Dailos Adargoma looked at it and felt a twinge of fright, a vague chill creeping on him like a bad weed on an old wall.

His brow knitted and he cursed the day he set his eyes on a married woman. He wanted to call Críspula all manner of names, but it was his fault, and he was man enough to admit he was not at his brightest when he went prancing around the governor’s married daughter. Six months in La Brumosa, not even as a prisoner, were a small punishment for having been caught with his hand inside Críspula’s skirt.

“Don’t you go wishing that fog to lift,” Mendo Estevez, his partner in misfortune, said as he dug his thumb into a Valencian orange. “That’s a good way to invite madness.”

Dailos looked at him. He was an old soldier, tanned by his many battles in the Mediterranean, sent to La Brumosa as a turnkey for the crown. He had a clean scar over his left cheek and he lacked one of his fingers. Under a pair of bushy eyebrows, a pair of cruel, dark eyes surveyed La Brumosa. That was the expression of a man wondering if the dog in front of him should be put down for good.

“I stayed there two years and the experience cured me of my wish for wine.”

“Ah,” Dailos felt his lips curving almost against his will. “Now it’s the time when you are going to tell me a lie about that cursed place.”

“No,” Mendo let his eyes roam the silhouette of that gray building coming through the fog at the speed of their small sailing vessel. “Tonight, after we settle, I’ll tell you the truth and you’ll wish I have lied to you.”

Dailos felt again how fear tried to tangle his soul, but he squared his jaw and fixed his eyes on the fortress.

~°~°~°~°~

The fortress was old and in bad repair. Mortar poured between the massive rocks, and rubble gathered in the staircases. This was the place where Spain brought people it seized and where Philip the Prudent intended to keep them lost forever.

Dailos, free to roam since only Mendo was allowed to lay eyes on His Majesty’s guests, started to climb the uneven steps of the tower. His friends, soldiers like him, said he could see Lanzarote from the loopholes to cure his homesickness and Dailos had promised to look through those, not because he missed home already, but to have the satisfaction of calling all his friends liars.

On his way up, he lit the ancient torches. The light was a good a remedy against the grip of anticipated loneliness.

“Small wonder these stones are cold.” Dailos said to himself, touching the dusty walls, dragging fine powders with his fingertips. “The sun does not shine in this accursed island, not even by divine grace.”

The loopholes had been eaten away by years of neglect and rain. If Dailos were desperate enough, he could throw himself through the hole without disturbing any of those ancient stones. Of course, the view from them improved little from the one he got on the ship: if you were to shoot a cannonball, you would never see it land.

Dailos leaned forward, trying to gaze further ahead. The warm breeze that caressed his face felt like a mother’s kiss, warm and unexpected after you noticed its absence for a while. Dailos looked down, curious and confused to find something resembling of heat on this island that God forgot.

All the way down, the open chasm of Hell greeted him with flames as high as a mountain. Inside the insufferable fulgor of the infernal fire, tortured souls twisted, howling, stretching their hands toward the Heavens, begged for mercy.

Dailos jerked away until his sweating back was stuck to the frigid stone. Dailos was a man used to face war horrors; he even had known prison and its rigors, but at this moment, his knees faltered and his water threatened to spill over the aged stones. His lips trembled as he tried to call the Holy Mother in his protection but words were stuck to his palate.

The cold breeze wafting up the staircase helped him to steady his heart. Of course, his eyes and ears had deceived him. Dailos peeled off the stone, forcing himself to look down again. He had little to lose left.

The scene was different this time.

There were people roaming the courtyard of the fortress. Some of them were armed, some others were attached to heavy chains. The ones poking and shouting orders looked more scared than the ones in chains. Dailos watched in horror how one of the armed ones, sporting the colors of Spain, tore open the shirt of one in chains, exposing a couple of ripe breasts. His ears registered laughter and curses. The chain gang, full of people bruised and bleeding, threatened to retaliate. Those people had been defeated, but not humbled.

Then three men crossed the main gate. The one in the center was weighed down with chains; Dailos noticed the bronze of his skin and the dark shade of his curly hair. The other two were Spaniard soldiers, one at each side, holding poles attached to the wide iron braces around his neck. They acted like they were handling a wild beast and not a conquered enemy.

The new group caused a mutiny. The chain gang attempted to break free, tripping over their chains. Two of them, a man and a woman, managed to reach the man just as two soldiers crossed their swords over the iron braces. The prisoner gasped and the couple shouted pleas to spare his life. The riot reached an impasse. Dailos felt like he was looking at a painting.

The woman moved first. She extended her hands to touch the prisoner, sobbing. The defeat was dawning on her and her shoulders slouched, but she touched his face and hold it with both hands bound with iron. Her hair fell like a curtain over her shame. The man in chains, however, didn’t look at her. His piercing dark eyes were looking up.

Those eyes trained on Dailos aroused an unwelcome feeling of utter dread.

This time, Dailos managed to keep enough wits to flee from the decayed loophole at full speed. His worn boots slipped over the stones, but his arms on the walls supplied the purchase his feet had lost. He was running wildly, but he had enough presence of mind to feel how the torches were snuffed by a gust of gelid wind. A wind that sounded like a chorus of tortured souls, crying out for mercy.

Dailos refused to acknowledge it, let alone turn his head around to confirm, but he was sure (that man with the eerie dark eyes) someone was running behind him. He could hear the footsteps, wet and uneven, and the rustling of something trailing behind. Something rough, heavy and crispy. The mist of his breathing was the only warm thing in the staircase. Dailos felt cold because horror had planted its icy grip inside his chest and was crushing his heart.

He was about to rush down another set of steps when he felt the hit against his chest. Dailos clutched the solid thing that stopped his run and cried out in terror when he felt it was a hand.

“Don’t go down!” Mendo cried over his terrified howl, trying with all his might to make him stop. “For your eternal soul, don’t go down!”

Dailos was a man forged in violence, but he cried his relief at hearing another human voice.

~°~°~°~°~

The night was falling and Dailos, setting in one of the provision crates that sailors left in the courtyard, looked up to the tower. The loopholes were only an insinuation. His mind was wandering, wondering about the impossible. From that distance, with this fog, it was impossible for any human to see the detail of anything here below.

Mendo Estevez came out of the fortress with two wooden bowls and sat on the steps. Dailos felt the need to scream at him to get to a safer place, but in the end, he said nothing and approached his fellow soldier.

“We don’t hunger,” Mendo said with a crooked smile.

Dailos shook his head and rolled a small barrel next to Mendo. He felt better if he didn’t touch the stones of the building. Mendo nodded and extended his hand to an open crate. He pulled out a colambre and squirted a splash of wine in his mouth.

“I thought you didn’t drink wine.”

“He’s awake,” Mendo said with a sly smile. “You can’t ask me, in good conscience, to bear his presence sober.”

“Is this the moment when you’ll tell you the truth and I’ll wish I have lied to me?”

“What’s the use of a lie now?” Mendo gulped his wine. “Would you believe a lie now?”

Dailos shook his head.

“You were born in these waters, right?”

Dailos nodded. All his family was born in the islands.

“ _Idir, el Moro_.”

The hair in Dailos' nape stood in end at the sound of the name. Idir had faded into darkness, but his cruelty and his crimes were passed from mouth to mouth enough times to become more than a legend and less than a folk tale.

“I see you’ve heard the name before.”

“He went away, like a bad dream.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” Mendo exclaimed, but he crossed himself with devotion. “He’s the only one who can stop his cursed soul now.”

Dailos followed his example and made the sign too. “Tell me the truth.”

Mendo put the colambre between his knees and sighed. “The truth? The crown got him in the end. He cost old Charles more ships than he was worth it, but we got him in chains. La Brumosa was the closest port. They brought him here with twenty-seven survivors…”

Dailos nodded again, and his eye caught movement in the doorway. Those icy fingers lurked again around the cockles of his heart.

“Soldiers told me they never knew Idir’s ship was so well supplied with women. A veteran told me some of them were smuggling... clubs.” Mendo made a double signal toward his crotch and laughed when Dailos looked confused. “You’ll reach there. You have time to think about it.”

“What did they do when they had Idir in chains?”

“They tossed the murderous dog into the empty space between the foundation, that’s what they did. And the twenty-seven that came with him were chained around the hatch waiting for a word from Toledo.”

Dailos tried to keep his eyes on Mendo because the sensation he felt in the staircase returned. Idir was by the door, and Dailos had cried out enough for one day.

“Word came one foggy morning.” Mendo stopped to drink again. “The Devil had turned his back on Idir. The King was in Austria and Cisneros sent word to relinquish the prisoner to the secular arm of the Inquisition in Tenerife.The women were to be enclosed in a Carmelite nunnery in Menorca, and the men were condemned to be galley-slaves for five years or until their deaths, whichever come first.”

“The Inquisition?”

“He was a Moor, wasn’t he?”

Dailos couldn’t argue against that logic as he couldn’t argue with the white plume of breath that escaped Mendo’s mouth.

“The captain of the fortress wasted no time in sharing the joyful news with Idir and his crew.” Mendo paused when a gust of cold wind swept the courtyard. “Their cries for mercy were heard for days. Mercy for Idir, they all said. They tried to barter for his life, for a quick death, for anything but the Inquisition. Their pleas fell on deaf ears and hard hearts.”

A shiver ran through Dailos' back and he faced the doorway, but there was nothing to see.

“They came for the women first. They all left the island clothed in sackcloth with shaved heads. All of them crying and still pleading for Idir.” Mendo passed his hand over his mouth. The wind came rushing down the tower, moaning. “Soldiers said that fog ate them before they left the gate…”

“Did they reach the cloister?”

“And how do you expect me to know that?”

Dailos shrugged.

“The men were dragged out the fortress. They put on a great fight, because, I assume, the galleys were not a great prospect. They all had heads balder than eggs. Some of them were still bleeding from cuts on their scalps.” Mendo stopped to take a big gulp of wine. “They all cursed each stone of the building, but what use was it? Damage was already done…”

The fog was closing down on them and the chill of the night nipped at their limbs.

“They forgot to take everything from their pockets, you know?” Mendo’s voice was thin and faltering. Dailos was not sure whether to blame the fear, the cold, or the wine. “They had seven flintstones and every head was full with long hair.”

The doorway was occupied now. Idir looked at them with hate in his eyes. Around his neck, a rope of multicolored hair formed a gallows knot.

Dailos extended his hand in a silent request for the colambre.

“When the Inquisition came, Idir was hanging from the grill of the hatch.” Mendo agreed, putting the wine in Dailos’ hands. “Dead, with the proof of his crew’s love around the neck.”

With a gulp, Dailos raised the colambre to his lips.

“And he’s still there…” Mendo trembled, his lips twisted in a doleful smile. “That’s the only sin you can’t repent from. I guess Hell doesn’t want anything to do with him.”

“And we are here…” Dailos gulped again. “With him.”

“At the leisure of His Majesty.”

Dailos Adargoma never expected the price of groping a married woman to be this steep.

**Author's Note:**

> This Author wants to express their gratitude to TexasDreamer01who went about and beyond with this beta work
> 
> -°-°-
> 
>  _Adendum_  
>  I finished writing this fic within the first minutes of All Souls' Day and thanks to TexasDreamer01 it was posted by three in the morning, the witching hour. 
> 
> I went to bed, pleased with my mischief. 
> 
> This fic borrowed heavily from a poem my father recited to me often, as often as I threatened to cut my hair short. My father was the sweetest of men and he tried to teach me that literature could be fun. He introduced me to my first fandom at the age for eight. For all his troubles, he lived to see me as an enthusiastic follower of penny dreadfuls and their equivalents. 
> 
> Today, during a downtime at work, out of curiosity and for the first time in my life, I googled the poem. Google was unhelpful. I sent a message to my brother, to ask him if he remembered anything besides the main elements. He texted me back to say he remembered the same things I did and the name of the Moor. That name sounded awfully familiar. With the name and the elements, I tried every Spanish variant of “noose”, turned out to be we have a lot of synonyms. 
> 
> I finally found it, the poem is named “Dogal de amor” (Love’s noose) by Emilio Carrere. I sat there with a coffee to read and remember my father. By the end of it, I was staring at a glowing screen, confused as heck.
> 
> Carrere’s poem is completely different from the poem of my youth. It has the same elements (the pirate, the lovers, the braid, the hanging) but they are put into action in a different way. The Moor is called “Leonardo” in the original; my father named him “Alejandro”. The poem my father recited to me while petting my hair, was indeed, the first fanfic of my life. A fanfic by my beloved dad…
> 
> I lost my father in 2011, two days after I posted my first fanfic online. The fae exchanged my favorite storyteller for the skill to have my own transformative stories whenever I want. Today, seven years after he went to that place where there is no pain and no sorry, I have unwittingly paid my tithe to Hell, by transforming the story he transformed, one that originally belonged to Carrere.
> 
> I hope you have enjoyed it.


End file.
